The Times has published an article by my old friend Charles Bremner, James Harding, his Editor, and David Charter, Times Brussels correspondent including an interview the latter two conducted with with José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. It is available behind a paywall at the Times but also freely available all over the right wing blogosphere in the US which has latched onto it as an example that Europe, too, is losing faith in Obama. Not surprisingly, it is also available in part on Fox News - without attribution. Why would they after all? Murdoch owns both Fox News and The Times.

The irony is that much of the European unhappiness comes from what would be seen (in the US) as the left, whereas the US Right rather gleefully assumes that Europeans are coming to agree with them.  This is obviously not the case on issues such as Climate Change. However the article presents most of European unhappiness with Obama as confirming the US Right's opposition to Obama.

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Former Irish Financial Regulator, Patrick Neary

Guarantee based on belief banks had €500bn in assets

The Government believed the risk to the taxpayer from its €400 billion bank guarantee scheme was offset by €500 billion in assets held by the banks, according to financial documents released by the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee this morning.

A briefing document compiled by Department of Finance officials for the Taoiseach, dated September 30th - one day after the guarantee was announced - suggested the financial exposure to the taxpayer was mitigated by a "very substantial buffer" of assets.

The asset quality in the financial institutions, the document said, was good with a strong concentration in residential mortgages with a relatively low loan-to-value ratio.

"There is therefore, a significant buffer before there is any question of credit impairments on the Exchequer on foot of the guarantee," the briefing note said.

As some here may know, I started my brief career as a blogger on Timesonline a couple of years ago. I soon got fed up of the abusive comments and always having to respond to an agenda being set by someone else. So when I discovered The European and Booman Tribunes, I gradually migrated here. I still used Times content for the occasional Lazy Quote Diary, but otherwise I can't say I miss Timesonline much. I like the idea of writing for a wider audience, but not at the price of being framed by the agendas of others.

Now the Murdoch owned Times has introduced a paywall and those who have remained there tell me the new site doesn't work very well with comments frequently disappearing or not being published at all. My limited experience of the new site during my free trial period indicated that it was extremely resource intensive, constantly launching videos and advertisements I didn't want, and constantly requiring me to log in again and not letting my browser store my login details.  The navigation structure was also surprisingly poor and all the effort seems to have gone into creating a graphic rich environment which mimicked the look and feel of the print edition as closely as possible.

So all in all, deciding not to join the "paid experience" wasn't even a close call for me even at only a fiver a month. I can get much of the same content for free elsewhere, and keeping up to date with British Establishment "thinking" has never been one of life's greater pleasures for me. However I wonder if I would have signed up for the paid experience if the site had been better and alternative sources of free information more limited? I don't currently pay for content anywhere on the internet, so why should I start now?  Is my opposition to paying for internet content principled or pragmatic?

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(Now also available on Booman and in Orange where a member of the family of one of those killed has commented).

Bloody Sunday was for me one of those life defining events, to be remembered a bit like the day JFK was assassinated, Nelson Mandela was freed, and I first heard Neil Young's "Harvest" and "After the Gold Rush" holed up in some Lexington, Virginia attic after some kind students had offered me a lift and a place to stay for the night as I was hitch-hiking my way down the east coast of America in 1973.

I was a student in Trinity College Dublin at the time of Bloody Sunday in 1972, not very happy with myself, my course, or the world into which I had been born. The world seemed to be a place where the powerful did more or less as they pleased, and the little people always got squashed. Paratroopers firing dum-dum bullets at unarmed civil rights marchers seemed to capture that feeling perfectly. I was enraged, and could do absolutely nothing about it.

Some of my contemporaries joined the Republican Movement, the anti-Apartheid Movement or Amnesty International. A Cabinet Minister and future Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, was dismissed for allegedly supporting the running of guns to the then almost quiescent IRA.

The picture of a Bogside mural at the top of this Diary is somewhat misleading. Father Edward (later Bishop) Daly did carry a white handkerchief as he was helping the wounded to safety under fire. But the attempt to portray a paratrooper standing on a bloody civil rights banner gives the misleading impression that he was standing with them and not shooting from cover some distance away. Neither were the IRA active in defending civilians. That was the time when the letters IRA were mockingly referred to as standing for "I Ran Away".

I studied Anarchism and Marxism and wrote for the college rag. It didn't amount to much.

That summer I worked as a summer student on a community development project in the nationalist estate of Kilwilkie, Lurgan, in Northern Ireland: a ghetto surrounded by a motorway, a railway line, and hostile Protestant estates. Every night we had the pigs - Saracen armoured cars screaming through the streets - and hauling people off to internment - indefinite detention without trial, and often with torture as a routine part of the process.

As a group of student volunteers we had everybody confused: Irish, English, Australian, my German name and passport at the time; Catholic, Protestant, Quaker, and a Krishnamurti devotee. Who's side were we on?

The gallant members of the Naas 7th. Mens Leinster League Tennis team succeeded in never winning a match, but were nevertheless successful in setting a rare standard of improvisation and camaraderie.  The improvisation stemmed from hardly ever having met beforehand, having little prior league team experience, and being informed of our selection on the night of the first match! Some were regrettably unavailable, but others stepped into the breach.  We struggled valiantly, but despite inspirational team talks, meticulous tactical preparation, and a rare application to the matters at hand, the opposition, mysteriously, always seemed to gain the upper hand.

I write it out in a verse -
McGettrick and Bonner
And McCudden and Doyle
with Killeen, Dunne and Schnittger
Now and in time to be,
Wherever white is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
Some terrible tennis was born.

(With apologies to William Butler Yeats: Easter, 1916)*

Having been the butt of Anglo humour for much of the last century, Ireland became the pin-up poster child of the great neo-liberal market revolution during the nineties and early naughties. Never mind that neither stereotype fitted very well: they fitted the larger purposes of their progenitors.

Then came the great crash of 2008, the Celtic tiger was devoured by its own young, and Ireland became a cautionary tale for all who would dare fly too close to the sun god of low tax, easy borrowing, and "light touch" regulation. It was all the fault of the Lehman collapse if the Irish Government was to be believed. Who could have predicted that?

Now two independent reports - albeit commissioned by the Irish Government - have given the lie to all of that.  The Irish crash was a peculiarly Irish creation after all.

Also available in orange where it has really upset the locals. Perhaps that is no bad thing if it shocks them out of their complacent belief that Obama can do no wrong because he is the smartest guy on the planet.

I never thought I would hear myself say this, because I hate unnuanced bland generalised assertions.  There are so many ways in which the Obama administration is a quantum improvement on Bush - think stimulus, healthcare, financial regulation, don't ask don't tell, and two reasonable Supreme Court nominations.  But on foreign policy in general, and Israel/Palestine in particular, Obama is proving to be as stupid as Bush:

1. He has failed to close Guantanamo detention centre or correct the gross violation of human rights it represents.

2. He has escalated an unwinnable war in Afghanistan

3. He has legitimised a military coup in Honduras

4. He has caved in to Netanyahu on illegal settlement expansion several times and has allowed his Vice President to be humiliated on a visit to Israel

5. He has capitulated to Chinese manipulation of the Dollar Yuan exchange rates despite numerous threats to confront the issue

6. He has caved in to his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, having accused him of corruption and falsifying elections - and to to Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, having accused him of being a drug lord

7. He has been repeatedly snubbed by the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has chaired meetings of 31 Latin American and Caribbean countries which excluded the United States, and actually got something constructive done by negotiating a deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Iran to ship 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey. Obama then ignored the deal and proposed tougher sanctions on Iran.

8. He has done nothing on climate change and was all for expanding deep sea off shore drilling until BP pissed in his back garden.

9. And now, to cap it all, he has blamed peace activists for getting themselves killed by an illegal act of war and opposed a UN investigation of the war crime.
   

Of course in no way was former EU Commissioner McCreevy's conduct of his office influenced by his prospects of directorships in the private sector on retirement including this long-rumoured appointment.  Indeed Charlie McCreevy and Michael O'Leary should make a very good fit.

Both have mouths which operate considerably in advance of their brains and enjoy the lifestyle of the country squire.

Morgan Kelly is professor of economics at University College Dublin and one of the few economists making serious dissenting noises about the Irish Government's current economic strategy.  I have quoted him at length before in Why God made Economists.  Again he says it all so much better than I can...

Burden of Irish debt could yet eclipse that of Greece

It is no longer a question of whether Ireland will go bust, but when. Unlike Greece, our woes do not stem from government debt, but instead from the government's open-ended guarantee to cover the losses of the banking system out of its citizens' wallets.

Even under the most optimistic assumptions about government spending cuts and bank losses, by 2012 Ireland will have a worse ratio of debt to national income than the one that is sinking Greece.

On the face of it, Ireland's debt position does not appear catastrophic. At the start of the year, Ireland's government debt was two- thirds of GDP: only half the Greek level. (The State also has financial assets equal to a quarter of GDP, but so do most governments, so we will focus on the total debt.)

Because of the economic collapse here, the Government is adding to this debt quite quickly. However, in contrast to its inept handling of the banking crisis, the Government has taken reasonable steps to bring the deficit under control. If all goes to plan we should be looking at a debt of 85 to 90 per cent of GDP by the end of 2012.

This is quite large for a small economy, but it is manageable. Just about. What will sink us, unfortunately but inevitably, are the huge costs of the bank bailout.

We can gain a sobering perspective on the impossible disproportion between the bailout and our economic resources by looking at the US. The government there set aside $700 billion (€557 billion) to buy troubled bank assets, and the final cost to the American taxpayer is about $150 billion. These sound like, and are, astronomical numbers.

But when you translate from the leviathan that is America to the minnow that is Ireland, it would be equivalent to the Irish Government spending €7 billion on Nama, and eventually losing €1.5 billion in the process. Pocket change by our standards.

Instead, our Government has already committed itself to spend €70 billion (€40 billion on the National Asset Management Agency - Nama - and €30 billion on recapitalising banks), or half of the national income. That is 10 times per head of population the amount the US spent to rescue itself from its worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

County Tyrone singer-songwriter Paul Brady is in the Irish singer song writer tradition of The Cranberries, Van Morrison, Sinéad O'Connor and U2 writing anti-war or social protest songs and recorded "The Island" for his 1986 album, "Back to the Centre."  It always seemed to me that The Island got to the heart of the Northern Ireland Troubles.

Lyrics and a cover version below...

Barack Obama campaigned on the themes of Hope and "Change you can believe in".  Nick Clegg promised a change from the tired old two party system and David Cameron asked people to choose Hope over fear.  

But what happens when fresh faced young newcomers seem to come from nowhere on the back of woolly promises of change and hope in order to tap into an anti-incumbent mood but at the same time seek to avoid alienating key party supporters and interest groups by being too specific in their policy proposals and promises? A great deal of public disillusion is the almost inevitable consequence as reality sets in. History has not been suspended and soon it is politics more or less as usual. The system does not change. Just ask Barack Obama...

The chart above is taken from the Pollster.com statistical trend of all polls and charts his meteoric rise in popularity from virtual unknown through his 52:44 win over McCain and reaching a 75:20 peak in the post election/inauguration euphoria. (Please note it measures personal popularity and not voting intentions or perceived job performance.  It is also a dynamic chart and will continue to update long after this story is written, so please note that the comments below relate to the position as of May 2010).

For a direct link to all previous stories, please click on links below.

Ever get fed up searching for that old diary with a brilliant insight you want to refer back to? No? Me neither. But I do sometimes need to reference an old diary for good or ill and it can be a pain to track back through all those ancient spiels especially when you can't remember when you wrote the piece you want to quote or reference. In addition, many of my friends are not really into blogging but occasionally express an interest in a specific diary. Almost invariably they have difficulty finding it in the maelstrom that is the European Tribune.

To save myself and them a bit of hassle I've compiled an index of my previous diaries on various topics and attached a link to this diary in my signature as a short cut to this index. The 194 blogs posted since Wed Nov 28th. 2007 are grouped somewhat arbitrarily under the following headings with the latest listed first. Blogs are listed only once even though many could have been listed under several headings.

1. Personal Topics (11)
2. ET, Blogging and the Internet (10)
3. Human Rights (14)
4. Energy, Climate Change and the Environment (10)
5. Irish Economy (15)
6. Irish Politics (19)
7. Irish European Referenda and Elections (40)
8. The EU and the Eurozone (17)
9. US Politics (39)
10. Global economics, politics, foreign policy and war. (11)
11. Sport (5)
12. Just having a laugh (3)

Just after I have committed myself to living in my home for the rest of my life and started to renovate and insulate it comes the joyous news by post that the road planning authorities want to drive a 50M wide dual carriageway though my home. The map above shows a number of proposed routes around the town of Blessington on the edge of Blessington lake. At this stage in the planning process the map only shows a number of 300M wide corridors within which the new road could be situated.  The Blue Corridor runs right through my house. The cyan, red, blue and (barely visible) grey corridors run right through my brother-in-law's farm rendering it likely to be inoperable or uneconomic as a working farm.

One of the routes also runs through the largely worked out quarries of Cement Roadstone Holdings Limited (CRH), one of the largest building materials companies in the world which employs 80,000 people and has not been behind the door in supporting politicians and parties it favours. CRH have been responsible for the illegal quarrying of much of Glen Ding and claims to have known nothing about the dumping of hundreds of thousands of tons of rubbish there. Guess which route is unlikely to be chosen?

Much as it pains me to admit it, Colman got it right in predicting more snow as late as late March/early April. US and mainland European readers might treat this as a bit of a non news item, but in recent years we have had almost no snow in many winters - due, most probably, to Global warming. Often we get just a few days of snow which melts almost as fast as it falls.  This year, however, the Wicklow hills have had a snow covering since Christmas. [Update] I've just had the house insulation upgraded and am busy getting quotes to install solar panels on the roof - some of which are only 50% of the original quote. It certainly pays to shop around in Ireland. [Figures also updated below]

   

I went to the Dail (Irish Parliament) today for a lunch engagement with Senator David Norris, independent politician, Joycean Scholar, Wildean wit, Shavian sage and possible candidate for the Presidency of Ireland.

Quinn Insurance workers demonstrating outside Dáil Éireann

From Thursday April 1st

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Five seismic events occurred in Ireland today which will have a profound effect on the Irish economy for generations to come.

1. NAMA, the National Assets Management Agency (or "bad bank") announced a "haircut" of 47% on the first tranche of 1,200 toxic loans to be transferred from Irish banks by agreeing to pay €8.5 Billion for loans with a book value of €16 Billion.

2. The Financial Regulator announced that the Core Tier 1 Capital Requirement for Irish banks is to be doubled from 4% to 8% of loans.

3. Arising from the NAMA haircut and the increase in Tier 1 Capital requirements, the Government estimated that the Irish banks will require an additional €22 billion in capital. €8.3 Billion of this is for Anglo Irish Bank alone, and it may require a further €10 billion when the full extent of its losses are known. Most of this additional capital will have to be provided by taxpayers.

4. The Financial regulator also applied to the High Court to appoint a Provisional Administrator to Ireland's largest insurance Company, Quinn Direct, after a €400 Million hole in its assets was revealed.

5. The Government and Unions agreed what amounts to a new "National Agreement" which would guarantee no further pay reductions until 2014 in return for ongoing cooperation with public service reforms to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

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Blessington Lake in January

The same scene a few days ago...

This winter has been the longest and coldest in at least 50 years in Ireland and we were snowed in for a couple of weeks when the snow was at its worst.  The Wicklow hills have been snow covered since before Christmas - the longest period of continuous snow covering that I can remember - and our end of Blessington lake was frozen over for a couple of weeks. I won't entitle this diary a photoblog because my eyesight is too poor to take good photographs and I only have an iPhone for company in any case.  However I hope this story of rustic life in north-west Wicklow will be of some wider interest...

Gays blamed for Srebrenica defeat

Dutch government officials reacted angrily today to claims by a retired US general that Dutch forces were overrun in Srebrenica in 1995 in part because of the presence of gay soldiers.

At a US congressional hearing yesterday on allowing gay soldiers to serve openly in the military, former Supreme Allied commander John Sheehan said there was a link between having homosexuals in the Dutch forces and the massacre at Srebrenica.

I wonder which Dutch leaders told General Sheehan that gays in the military were at fault? Is this also his explanation for why the Dutch are pulling out of Afghanistan to be followed by various other Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys? No doubt the ending of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy in the US Military will result in defeat in the War Against Islam Terror and the end of the Roman US empire as well. The future of Christendom is at stake!

Father Brendan Smyth

Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of all Ireland, presided over an investigation into the activities of the paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth in 1975 at which the abused children aged 10 and 14 were made to swear an oath of secrecy and not report their abuse to the civil authorities. Fr. Smyth was banned from hearing confessions in the diocese but was moved to other dioceses where he went on to abuse a total of 74 children for another two decades until he was finally brought to book in 1994.

Today, on the national radio, the spokesman for the Catholic Church, Monsignor Dooley, a former professor of Canon Law, argued that Priests are in the same privileged position as lawyers who are not required to report their suspicions that their clients may have committed a crime. A priest is bound by the secrecy of the confessional, he argued, despite the fact that the investigation over which Cardinal Brady presided was not conducted under the seal of the confessional.

Wave energy is one of the great virtually untapped renewable energy sources on the planet and OceanEnergy is one of a number of Irish Companies intent on capturing it. Another company in the same market is Wavebob

Irish wave energy technology company Wavebob Ltd. announced today that the EU FP7 R&D programme is to provide grant aid of €5.1 million to a consortium led by Wavebob Ltd, in order to deploy a full-scale pre-commercial, grid-connected wave energy converter (WEC) off the coast of Portugal. The 6-company consortium will invest a further €3.4 million, bringing total funding for the project to over €8.5 million.